Turn Left! I'll Show You Turn Left!
by cassikat
Summary: What if Donna had been a little faster? What if she'd actually had a chance to talk to herself? What would happen then? AU of Turn Left, very angry and rather dark.


Disclaimer: BBC owns Doctor Who. I'm just mucking about with what-ifs.

AN: I was working on other variants of Turn Left for other stories, and suddenly it hit me: What would it be like if Donna actually got to go shout at herself to turn left? And then this was cooked up.

With a lot of unresolved anger issues that popped up, because the whole 'let's send Donna back in time too far away to intercept past-Donna' incident really looks like Rose was setting up a murder-by-proxy. Rose showed no signs of exertion when she came to say those last words - she popped right to where Donna was dying and didn't have to run anywhere. With precision like that, why didn't she bring from Pete's World any old technobabble doohickey that would give their cobbled-together time machine something close to the accuracy of the dimension cannon?

There are two logical conclusions from this train of thought, and this story follows the darker one - that Rose wanted Donna dead because she was/is competition for the Doctor's attention. The other conclusion - that Rose was of the honest belief that Donna had to die to fix everything - will be followed up some other time, in another story.

As for Donna actually making it to herself in the nick of time...well, fear works wonders in pushing the body beyond it's limits. So does rage, and Donna had a lot of that building up.

Rose fans, this is your last warning. Turn back now, because you won't enjoy this and I'd rather not waste my finite amount of internet-time mocking and deleting flames.

This fic is rated M for safety, because there's a lot of foul language and a murder.

* * *

Turn Left?! I'll show you Turn Left!

* * *

Despite the delight of having made it back in time and seeing everything like it used to be, Donna felt uneasy, like something had gone wrong. Then she properly took in her surroundings and realised why. "...this is Sutton Court!" She gasped. "I'm half a mile away. Half a mile away!" She shouted at the air, furious that the bitch that had been interfering in her life had done this to her, when she popped up so conveniently anywhere she wanted, at all the right times. Bloody blonde bint...if she ever got her hands on her again...

She checked the watch they'd given her and whimpered when she saw the time. "9:57. Four minutes to make half a mile...oh my God."

She took a deep breath, braced herself, then took off running. If she was really so special, if this Doctor thought she was all that and a plate of chips, then she was going to prove she really was. She was bloody damn well going to make it to herself and force herself to turn left even if she had to stand in the road and dare herself to kill herself to keep herself from turning right.

She ignored the confusion of that thought and ran as hard and fast as she could, though her lungs were already burning. For once in her life, Donna thought as she dodged pedestrians, she was going to prove she wasn't bloody worthless. Wasn't just a temp. She had her mum's stubbornness, after all. And she was her dad's Ginger-Snap, her granddad's Little General, and the two best men in her life had told her over and over that she could do anything. So she was damn well going to fix everything and prove them right.

She flung herself across an intersection by leaping up onto a car bonnet and jumping car to car until she hit the other side with a stumble, keeping herself upright by sheer force of will. It wasn't just the desperation to keep the last two years from happening that was fuelling her. Oh no. It was also a lot of pent-up rage that was fuelling those long strides and making her push people out of the way when she couldn't dodge them.

Fury at that bint was there, oh yeah it was. But there was so much built up underneath just that. Every time she'd held her tongue when her mum went off about her being a failure, every time a boyfriend had been stolen, or decided he was coming out, or just decided she wasn't good enough. Every time she thought she had a permanent job, only to be replaced by something younger and prettier and less likely to object to having her arse treated like public property. All that and more fuelled her run, and she didn't stop for anything.

Except once, at an intersection too big for the trick with the car bonnets, where she leant on a lamp post and sucked in huge lungfuls of air. Absently she checked her watch and her eyes bugged out. She'd nearly got where she needed to be in just two minutes! Two minutes, when she'd never been able to run a half-mile in six, much less four! As the light changed in her favour, she took off again with a fierce grin on her lips. She was gonna make it! She was going to get herself to make the proper turn, and then she was going to strangle that peroxide tart. Just two blocks to go and some shouting to do.

And there was the car. And oh God, there she was, along with Mum...she couldn't believe how normal and healthy they looked! Feeling faint at the impossibility of what she was about to do, she stumbled over on wobbly legs and knocked on the car window.

The window was rolled down a bit, and, without looking, Donna said. "Sorry, no spare quid today." Then a gasp from Sylvia in the passenger seat made Donna look to see who had knocked, and they both gawped at an older, shabby Donna who looked like she'd been on short rations for a long time. Donna stared, eyes huge, and breathed. "Oh. My. God."

The older Donna glanced at her watch - 10:00 and some seconds - and snapped. "No time for arguing. Donna, ignore Mum and turn left if you don't want to end up me in two years. Mum, just shut the hell up for once in your life. All your nagging makes me sick, but I've held my tongue cos you're my mum and I love you. But I've had nearly two years of hell with this building up and I'm gonna have my say!"

She took a shaky breath, braced herself on the car door, and continued. "All the time you nag about how I never have a permanent job, and you never once asked why, and now I finally get my say. It's cos the bosses never give a damn about how skilled a secretary is - the minute I slap their hands off my arse cos it isn't their property, that's when I get the boot. And that's what happens in just about a year if you go take that job with Chowdry, Donna. You slap the bastard's hand off your arse and you get replaced by a blonde who's younger, with a quarter of your skills. And after that, the world goes to hell."

Donna in the car frowned at her apparently homeless, future self. She'd have thought this was all bonkers, and a set-up like those candid camera shows...except that she'd wanted to say just about those words to Mum for some time. And nobody knew that, not even Gramps. It was still confusing though, and she showed it in her question. "But what do I do? What's temping at H.C. Clements got to do with the world not going to hell?"

"Dunno, other than being in the right place at the right time to save some daft bloke from drowning Christmas Eve," the Donna outside the car said. "But anything's got to be better than this, yeah?" She gave herself a wan smile, glanced at her watch to see it had been 10:01 for several seconds already, then stepped away from the car and wobbled. "Don't worry about me, just turn left and bloody well live your life, you hear me Donna?"

"Yeah. Good luck, Donna," Donna nodded, gave herself an encouraging smile, then turned left.

* * *

A block later, she glanced at her mother, who had been dead silent since the older her had said so much. "Something wrong, Mum?"

It took a moment for Sylvia to manage any words, and she looked at her daughter with pain in her eyes. "...is that what you really think of my trying to get you to get a permanent job, Donna? That I'm a horrible nag who doesn't care that her daughter's been getting harassed?" Sylvia was shaken by what that ghost of the future had said to her.

"Eh," Donna shrugged as she drove toward the City and her waiting job. "Must have been a lot of hell that future me went through in two years, cos I've only had three jobs that ended like that. Though I suppose a good number of those temp jobs might have been open to permanent positions if I'd put up with wandering hands. And yeah, it did hurt me when you wouldn't ever let me get my say in to explain why, but you know what?"

She stopped at a light and turned to smile at her mum. She'd somehow found peace with her relationship with her mum, thanks to a future self showing up to spout off, and she wasn't going to leave her mum depressed just cos she'd got the truth shoved in her face. "Despite all that, I love you, and I know you love me and you want the best for me. And when I find what's best, you and Dad and Gramps will be behind me a hundred percent. She knew that too, y'know, despite all that pent-up bitterness. 'I love you' was almost the first thing she said, after telling you to shut it."

"Of course I love you, Donna. You're my daughter." Sylvia sniffed as they started moving again, then turned the conversation away from the uncomfortable subject of her failings as a mother. "But really, what on Earth could you do as a temp at H.C. Clements that could change the world that much? And how is that job going to have you at the right place to save someone from drowning?"

"Dunno," Donna shrugged. "But I'm not gonna end up homeless and bitter and starving, that's for sure. Let's just treat it like an episode of The Twilight Zone and forget it unless something happens to prove it, okay?"

"Well, all right." Sylvia nodded, then settled back into the passenger seat as her daughter drove into her future. A future that would have less nagging in it, no matter what happened.

* * *

"That went well." Feeling weaker than a newborn kitten from her overexertion, Donna somehow managed to stagger to and into a tiny alley between two shops before her legs gave out to drop her abruptly to the ground.

"...ow..." she mumbled, so exhausted from being so hungry and not fed before this jaunt, then all the running she'd done, that she could barely feel the pain of landing directly on her tailbone. It was probably broken, but she just couldn't muster the strength to care...

"You daft bitch. You stupid cow," came the angry voice of the blonde who was the first person Donna had ever really wanted to murder. "How dare you think you know more than me? You were supposed to kill yourself back there, not actually make it to talk to yourself!"

"Cos I do, some ways," Donna murmured, angry enough to voice some conclusions she'd come to, even through her pain and exhaustion. "Cos there's no way in hell I'll ever kill myself for some stupid peroxide tart who's pining for a man who dumped her."

She would have laughed at the look on the woman's face if she'd not had a pain start up in her side. Like the worst cramp ever, times ten. Donna put one hand over that stabbing agony, not like it would help, and growled through the pain. "Didn't think I'd figure that out, huh? Why else put me half a mile away with the shape I'm in? You want rid of the competition. Cos that's what I am to you, innit? Competition for the Doctor."

"You have to die," the blonde said as she raised a ridiculously large gun. "You die, and you give my message to the Doctor."

"Like hell," Donna rasped, and spat out one question she hoped would save her life. Such as it was. "You'll have to do the killing yourself, and what's the Doctor gonna say about that?"

"You're never going to know, and neither is he, cos it'll never have happened," She pulled the trigger on her huge gun, which put quite a large hole in the exhausted ginger, and the blonde stood there and watched as her life drained away. Only when Donna was less than a minute away from death did she lean in to whisper. "You tell him Bad Wolf, and know when you do, he'll be leaving _you_ soon."

"...liar..." ghosted out on Donna's last breath.

* * *

She'd thought there'd be nothing but blackness, but everything was rewinding instead. Somehow knowing that this was what the bitch meant when she'd said it wouldn't have happened, she held onto that last day with every ounce of mental ability and stubbornness she had. The same mind and memory that had her master so many offices in two days or less was going to remember every important moment, or she wasn't the best temp in Chiswick.

She came back to herself in the fortune-teller's place, screaming, and felt that beetle fall off her back. Bolting to her feet, she stomped on it hard then glared with righteous fury at the fortune-teller who was desperately trying to get away from her. "What. The HELL. Was that?!"

"You were so strong," the woman wailed, without answering the question. "What are you? What will you be? What will you become?"

"I'll tell you what I'm gonna become! I'm gonna become your worst nightmare! Oi! Get back here you bitch! You've got explaining to do!" She shouted as the woman fled through a cloth-draped door, and would've followed right after except the Doctor came in.

"I'd know that voice anywhere," he said as she turned around. "What's got you so mad though?"

"Where the hell have you been?" Donna snapped, then threw herself at him for a hug. "Oh never mind," she continued as she felt his arms wrap around her. "I have had one hell of a day."

"Day? It's only been half an hour since I saw you last," he said as he held Donna close. Then he saw the stomped-on beetle and frowned. "I think you should tell me about it."

"Love to," she replied, then, once they ended the hug, she kicked the beetle away from the stools.

"I need to look at that," he snapped. "That beetle you're so angry with might have some side-effects or something that I'll need to know about!"

"Fine, just keep it away from me," she huffed as she sat down. She didn't want to think about that horrible thing anymore.

"It'll be all right, Donna," he said, hoping to calm her down as he knelt by the very dead beetle. "I just worry."

"You should," she snapped, with a full-body shudder at the remembrance. "That was attached to me until just a minute ago!"

"I'll get right on checking it out then," he replied and dug in his pockets for a stick and his sonic. "Did you have to stomp on it though?"

"When you find out what I went through, you'll be surprised I wasn't stomping it into paste when you showed up," she rolled her eyes as he started poking at it with the stick. "Blimey, the stuff you keep in your pockets," she managed a half-laugh and started calming herself down. He wasn't that fortune-teller, or that blonde, she shouldn't really be shouting at him.

"I'm all ears," he said and smiled at her, then went back to poking, and occasionally sonicing, the beetle.

"Yeah. Well, it all started when the bug attached to me...or maybe when that wench started prompting me to tell her what lead me to meeting you. S'weird, thinking that if I hadn't made one little turn I wouldn't have met you, but that's what happened. Bug on me, and wench chanting 'Turn right' at me over and over, and suddenly I'm back in the past and not going to the job at H.C. Clements but going off to some photocopier job instead."

He looked up at her and frowned. "Oh, that's not good. What happened then?"

Donna sighed. "Well, you drowned under the Thames cos I wasn't there, and then the world went to hell by express train. Can't really remember much of that and I'm glad, cos what I do remember was really disturbing. But the last day, that I remember some of." She scowled at the memory as he joined her on the other stool.

"What happened?" He quietly asked and took her hand. He remembered that day he'd met her for the first time. It was very probable that, without her to save, he'd have been so busy drowning the Racnoss that he wouldn't have paid attention to his own safety until too late.

"A daft blond bint who'd been stalking me off and on for almost two years got me to agree to come with her to a warehouse where they'd been keeping your TARDIS." Donna looked at him, tears prickling her eyes with the pain she hadn't known to feel for the ship back then. "Oh God, Doctor, they'd gutted her! Ripped open her console and run wiring out of her! She was dying...and they didn't care! All they wanted was to use her so they could make a poor-man's time machine that depended on bouncing chronons or something off a bunch of mirrors. Or...I think that's what it was, cos I didn't catch all of that explanation."

She shrugged and managed a hint of a smile. "Too pissed off that I wasn't getting answers to pay attention, I guess. Or too scared of that ruddy beetle-bug stuck on my back, take your choice."

"Probably a bit of both," he said, and managed a bit of a smile even though he felt sick at her description of what had happened to his TARDIS. "D'you want to go on?"

"Have to, cos that's the part I remember best," Donna said. "Anyway, they got me all set up to make myself turn left instead of right. But they set me down in the past half a mile away. Half a mile," she almost shouted in remembered indignation.

"We-ell, that could've been anything from inaccuracy in targeting coordinates to their hoping you didn't cause a time rip and incite Reapers by interacting with yourself." He said, then frowned when she flinched.

"Oops." She hunched her shoulders together and gave him a sheepish look. "But...well, that's what I did. I was so furious, thinking I'd been deliberately set down so far away, that I actually made it. Half a mile in three minutes and a bit, and now I can't believe I did it with the poor shape I was in. Then I shouted at my mum, told myself that I'd just lose another job for not putting up with wandering hands if I went right, and off I went turning left."

"Donna," he sighed in exasperation. "I thought you knew better than that, after I told you what Rose did when I took her back to meet her dad!"

"Well I'd never met you at that time, had I?" She frowned at him, then tilted her head. "I didn't touch myself, though. Didn't even touch Mum, even...closest I got to either of them was knocking on the car window. And yes, I can remember the other side of the conversation too. Thought it was utterly daft, but I believed it cos no one but me knew I'd wanted to shout like that at my mum. Then Mum and I had a brief heartfelt conversation and we decided to treat it like an episode of The Twilight Zone."

"Well, we're all still here so you didn't trigger off any Reapers," the Doctor said, then tilted his head. "And that would be why I've got two sets of memories about your mother, the newer set with her a bit more friendly."

"Oh? What was she like before? And how come you remember, is that another Time Lord thing?" Donna asked, honestly not remembering anything other than her mother treating the Doctor like a welcome guest after she'd told her he was the bloke she'd saved.

"Not as nice, and let's leave it at that," he replied. "And yes, another Time Lord thing. I'll still remember both versions, although the older one will fade now. But there wasn't any harm done with the change, and your mother's a nicer person now, so I'm not going to try and change it back." He paused, then raised a curious eyebrow. "Was that the end of it then? You watched yourself turn left and then you woke up here?"

"I wish," she snorted, then sighed and looked away. "I was in really poor shape from pushing myself that hard...hadn't had near enough to eat in at least six months, and I hadn't had anything but a cup of coffee in...ooh, six or eight hours at the very least. So I was just fallen down in an alley, wanting to pass out, when the blonde showed up again in her fancy little light show, carrying a ridiculously large gun. Then she started ranting at me about how I was supposed to have died to make myself turn left."

"She what?!" The Doctor leant forward, frowning in worry, both for Donna and because he was beginning to think he knew who the blonde was. "So you were right, then, about being dropped half a mile away. It _was_ deliberate."

"Oh yeah," Donna agreed, then looked away. "I was vicious there, cos she'd been talking you up a lot like she owned you, and it's probably just cos I wasn't well-nourished and I was so exhausted and furious about the half-mile thing, but I said I wasn't killing myself for a daft bint who was pining for a man who'd dumped her. And then I accused her of wanting me dead cos she saw me as competition for you."

He tensed, because there was only one blonde woman he knew who might talk like that, but waited for her to tell him the rest. He already didn't like it, but he needed to hear it. And he'd have words with Donna later about how vicious she was, but she'd already admitted it. And anger made people say very harsh things, true or not.

"Anyway, then she said I had to die and then give you her message, and I got really nasty because I didn't want to die, and you know me. Words are my weapons. So I asked her what you'd think of her killing me." She looked into his eyes then, and cried for the pain in his. "She said you'd never know cos it wouldn't have happened, and then she shot me."

"And then what?" He thought Donna might be afraid of him now, because of the harsh tenseness of his voice. Why else would she be crying? Surely she couldn't see the pain he was feeling?

"Then she said to tell you 'Bad Wolf'. And that when I did, I should know you were going to get rid of me soon." She sucked in a sobbing breath and tried to stop crying. "And then I died, I guess, and everything went into high-speed rewind and I woke up here screaming, and the first thing I did was squash that beetle."

"And shouted a lot," he managed a more normal tone, though he failed to manage a smile as he handed her a handkerchief. He'd tell her what 'Bad Wolf' meant later. When he'd come to terms with what both she and Rose had done, if he was lucky. But he wasn't getting rid of Donna for fighting with words, not when he'd not got rid of Rose for nearly destroying all life on Earth.

"Yeah, at the witch who ran off instead of answering questions. Speaking of the beetle, what was it before I stomped it?" Donna asked, having managed to stop crying, and wiped her eyes before giving back the handkerchief.

"One of the Trickster's Brigade," he said as he absently returned the cloth to his pocket. "They change lives in tiny little ways, for the fun of it mostly. Like turning right instead of left. Teeny little changes that the universe usually compensates around. But with you, that one little change made a whole parallel world."

Glad to let her horrible moments of acid words and dying go for a while, she still frowned at him. Hadn't he said... "Hold on though. Thought you said parallel worlds were sealed off?"

"They are," he replied. "But you had one created around you. That's happened to you twice now."

"What?" Donna asked, boggled. Had they had something happen that she just didn't remember?

"Well, the Library, and then this." He frowned in thought. Why was everything happening to Donna? It wasn't like she went looking for trouble...she was one of his most sensible companions, in that respect. People did like kidnapping her though...

"Oh. S'pose it goes with the job, travelling through time and space," Donna said with a shrug. She hadn't thought the Library experience was a parallel world, but what did she know?

"Eh, it used to be a possibility in the past, before the walls were sealed. But...sometimes I think there's way too much coincidence around you, Donna. I met you once, then I met your grandfather, then I met you again. In the whole wide universe, I met you for a second time. It's like something's drawing us together..." He trailed off, thinking furiously, then huffed a sigh and shook his head as she distracted him.

"You're bonkers. I'm not _that_ special." Donna said and tried to look away, but he caught her chin and made her keep looking at him.

"You're the one who's bonkers, Donna. You're brilliant." He smiled at her, trying to get her to see the obvious. One of these days he'd get her to properly believe him.

"She said you said that. The blonde who killed me," Donna frowned, trying to remember what else the woman had said before she'd gone all bunny-boiler. "She...she also said the stars are going out. And I saw it, in that parallel world. It's why I went with her to the warehouse, to try and stop that."

"Yeah, but that world's gone," he murmured, trying to reassure her even though he felt a sinking feeling in his hearts that meant this was going to be trouble. Big trouble.

"Yeah, I know that world's gone...but she said it was all worlds. Every world. She said the darkness is coming even here." Donna frowned in confusion at that. "But how would she know? I mean, she was just a daft blonde with a vicious streak from a now-gone world, right?"

He sighed and gave her a bleak look. "No. No, I'm afraid she wasn't, Donna. 'Bad Wolf'...that tells me who she is." He stood up and helped her up. "Come on, back to the TARDIS with us."

"That I'll agree with - I won't rest easy till I see her all intact again. That was just horrible, seeing her all ripped open like that." She followed him to the door, and then dug in her heels. "But...who is she, Doctor?"

"Trouble," he growled, and left the tent-like room in a swirl of his coat.

"Just like a man," she muttered and followed him out to see him staring all about. Whoever she was, she really was trouble cos 'Bad Wolf' was everywhere. "Oh isn't that wizard. What is she then, super graffiti artist?"

"Donna, not now! Back to the TARDIS, hurry!" He grabbed Donna by the hand and nearly dragged her back to his ship in a combination of fear and anger.

"Oi! Careful, Spaceman!" Donna shouted, but managed to keep up with him after the first stumble of surprise.

They ran through the empty market, which Donna thought was odd because it had been full just a little while ago. Maybe an hour? Wasn't closing time already, was it? Or was everyone hiding from all the Bad Wolf nonsense showing up everywhere? When they got to the TARDIS, Donna decided that the people were hiding - cos she wanted to hide too, now. Bad Wolf was even replacing all the words on the TARDIS, and that just wasn't right.

The Doctor stood and stared at his ship for a moment, then opened the door and rushed inside where he groaned at the red lighting and the sound of the Cloister Bell. "Oh no. No no no no no."

"Doctor?" Donna couldn't keep a quiver out of her voice as she shut the door behind her. That bell ringing sounded really ominous. "What's that bell mean?"

"The Cloister Bell means danger. End of the universe level danger." He was tense as he reached out to stroke the console. At his touch the red lighting eased more toward her normal spectrum, but the TARDIS was still ringing the Cloister Bell.

"Oh." She was silent for a moment, then she gently touched his shoulder. "Doctor? Can you tell me who that woman was now?"

He didn't want to, but with the TARDIS announcing danger as she was, he had to. Might never get the chance otherwise. "Rose. That was Rose Tyler."


End file.
